Into the Blue

by Robert Goddard

  An hour later, bathed, shaved and refreshed, Harry was lying on the bed, wearing nothing but a hotel dressing gown, across the breast pocket of which three ubiquitous geese were in embroidered flight. Refreshment had not brought inspiration, however, and he was beginning to despair of ever deciding what to do next when the crunching of car tyres on the gravel by his windows was followed by an exchange that instantly resolved his difficulty.

  ‘Good meeting, Mr Cunningham?’

  ‘Bloody awful, Ted, since you ask.’

  ‘Back to your office, is it?’

  ‘How did you guess?

  Harry was instantly upright. Through the net curtain he could see a porter assisting the driver of the car into a wheelchair. Rex Cunningham was living disproof of the youth-preserving powers Harry had imputed to Breakspear College. He looked to belong to a different generation from that of Dysart and Ockleton, his face flushed and lined beneath a mane of grey hair, his chest heaving desperately as he lowered himself into the wheelchair. It was clear that the events of 17 May 1968 had left their mark on him as indelibly as they had on Willy Morpurgo.

  Harry tore the dressing gown off and flung on some clothes. Another squint through the net curtains showed Cunningham being pushed up a ramp in the direction of the reception area. Grabbing his key, Harry hurried from the room and followed the corridors round to intercept. By the time he arrived, however, the pair were nowhere to be seen. He glanced down one passage to no avail, then tried the next, just soon enough to catch the porter emerging from the third door along.

  ‘Mr Cunningham in?’ he enquired casually as they crossed.

  ‘Yes, sir. Is he expecting you?’

  ‘Hard to say.’ He knocked and went in without waiting for an answer.

  ‘Yes?’ Cunningham looked up from his desk with a frown of irritation. At close quarters, he appeared less decrepit than dissolute, blotched and bloated like the least repentant of debauchees. This might have seemed merely the occupational hazard of the self-indulgent restaurateur, but for a manic edge conttibuted by the tightly-curled crop of hair, the thin cigar drooping from his wide mouth and the garishness of a turquoise tie standing out against a black suit and matching shirt.

  ‘Hello. My name’s Harry Barnett. I’m staying here tonight. You’re the proprietor, I take it: Rex Cunningham?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘You don’t know me, but we have a mutual friend: Alan Dysart. I expect you read about the girl who disappeared while staying in his villa in Rhodes. I was his caretaker there.’

  Cunningham slowly removed the cigar from his mouth and propped it carefully in an ashtray. His lips were too large for his face, Harry noticed. When eating, they would make him look as if he were gobbling. Even now, they were irresistibly suggestive of greed. ‘Was his caretaker?’

  ‘I’m not anymore.’

  ‘Then what are you?’

  Harry ignored the question. ‘You know Heather - Mallender, I believe.’

  ‘Know? Don’t you mean knew, Mr …’

  ‘Barnett. You don’t deny it, then?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I’m trying to find her. I think you might be able to help.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘She came here about three months ago and made your acquaintance, didn’t she?’

  Cunningham backed his wheelchair away from the desk and stared at Harry quizzically, though whether because he was reluctant to answer or because the mere asking of the question puzzled him it was impossible to tell. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘On whose behalf are you making these enquiries, Mr Barnett?’

  ‘My own.’

  ‘Not Alan Dysart’s?’

  ‘No. Not Alan Dysart’s.’

  ‘And what precisely do you want to know?’

  ‘What happened when she came here.’

  ‘I haven’t said she did.’

  ‘You don’t have to. I know she did.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By putting two and two together.’

  ‘Then you must be a better mathematician than you look.’ Cunningham moved his chair round to Harry’s side of the desk, stopped in front of him and stared up into his face. Suspicion was apparent in every doubt-ridden defile of his expression, perhaps, it suddenly struck Harry, too apparent, as if blazoned there to conceal something else. ‘Heather Mallender did dine here about three months ago, Mr Barnett, it’s true, but so what? I have fifty different diners every night. The Skein of Geese is justly famed for its cuisine. I didn’t even remember her until I read about her in the papers.’

  ‘But she came here specifically to see you?’

  ‘How should I know? I always take a turn in the restaurant to see there are no complaints. I may have had a few words with her, but that’s all.’

  ‘Was she alone?’

  ‘No. There was an admirer in tow.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘I’ve absolutely no idea.’ Cunningham smiled a broad slow smile of undisguised provocation. It left Harry in no doubt that he would learn nothing from this man without offering him something in return.

  ‘Did they stay overnight?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Then why did they come so far? Haslemere’s hardly an evening’s drive from Weymouth.’

  ‘Weymouth?’ Cunningham’s ignorance was now patently assumed.

  ‘Where she lived, Mr Cunningham, as I think you know.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘She wanted to speak to you about her sister, didn’t she? The late Clare Mallender.’ It was a guess, though scarcely a wild one, and Cunningham’s reaction confirmed it had hit the mark.

  ‘Offhand, I can’t think of a single good reason why I should tell you anything that passed between us, Mr Barnett.’

  ‘How about this?’ Harry tapped the foot plate of Cunningham’s wheelchair with the toe of his shoe.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean the car crash twenty years ago in which you lost the use of your legs and Willy Morpurgo the use of his brain.’ Cunningham’s jaw sagged. He was clearly surprised. Perhaps, thought Harry, Heather had not told him of her visit to Oxford – or what she had learned there. ‘Your old chum Cyril Ockleton was most—’

  ‘Ockleton?’ It was true, then: for reasons of her own, Heather had kept Cunningham in the dark.

  ‘Yes. I’ve spoken to Ockleton, just as Heather did, and what he told me has led me here, just as it led her.’

  Something akin to sudden understanding crossed Cunningham’s face. Then he said in a voice to which composure had been restored: ‘Perhaps, after all, there’s some merit in discussing the matter. Why don’t you join me for dinner, Mr Barnett? I’ll be less busy then, better able to recollect the details of Miss Mallender’s visit.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Shall we say seven-thirty – in the bar?’ He smiled charmlessly.

  ‘Seven-thirty it is.’ Harry turned to go.

  ‘Oh, Mr Barnett …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Our restaurant’s very select. Do you think you could spruce yourself up a little? The way you look at present, my maître d’ may well refuse you admittance.’

  23

  THE BAR OF the Skein of Geese was the kind of drinking establishment Harry detested: fiddly little bowls of cashew nuts and olives littering every surface; an effeminate barman who looked as if he would not know a handpump from a cocktail umbrella; lighting so subdued a fellow could not see to count his change; and a tape of Glenn Miller standards that made him positively nostalgic for the reception area’s bastardized Vivaldi.

  Harry had arrived early for his appointment with Cunningham and was already regretting it. The tie he had unearthed from the neglected depths of his jacket pocket was badly creased and stained with what he strongly suspected to be taramosalata. What was worse, wearing it had obliged him to fasten the top button of his shirt, an exercise which had drawn his attention to an extra half inch of fat his neck had gained since the la
st such occasion. This, followed by a pint of the Skein of Geese’s execrable ale and an overheard conversation between two gin-guzzling county ladies concerning the merits of shorter hemlines, had plunged him into abject misery.

  He had just glanced at his wristwatch, to discover that Cunningham’s arrival still lay approximately two replays of Little Brown Jug in the future, when a woman slid onto the next bar-stool to his and said: ‘Hello, Harry,’ in a tone of husky confidence which suggested they had been lifelong friends.

  ‘I don’t think I—’

  ‘Nadine Cunningham. You met my husband earlier.’ She was at least ten years Cunningham’s junior, Harry judged, blonde-haired and bright-eyed with a sparkling smile; all pert vivacity and curvaceous promise in a black woollen dress that fitted where it touched, as Barry Chipchase would undoubtedly have phrased it. What the pair of county ladies thought of its mid-thigh hemline Harry could not imagine, but he for one was not about to object to the brush of her black-stockinged knees against his drab-trousered legs. ‘My usual, please, Vince,’ she said to the barman, ‘and another of whatever Mr Barnett is drinking. Do you have a light, Harry?’

  ‘Er, yes.’ He pulled out the Skein of Geese matchbook and clumsily lit her cigarette.

  ‘Rex might be a few minutes late. He asked me to keep you amused.’ The way she smiled as she exhaled a first lungful of smoke suggested she fully intended her remark to be ambiguous. ‘I gather you’re trying to find Heather Mallender.’ Preliminaries, it seemed clear, were not something she cared for.

  ‘Well, yes, but—’

  ‘My husband tells me everything, Harry. Well, almost everything.’

  ‘Then you’ll know Heather came here about three months ago. Cheers.’ He started on the drink she had bought him.

  ‘She dined here on Saturday the tenth of September. I checked our records, you see.’ This time her smile was in open acknowledgement of her own efficiency. ‘The booking was made in her name, but the bill was paid by her escort: a P. R. Kingdom, according to the credit card receipt.’

  September 10th was the Saturday following Heather’s visit to Oxford and thus just when Harry would have expected her to proceed to the Skein of Geese. The date did not surprise him, but the identity of her companion certainly did. ‘I’m grateful, Mrs Cunningham, but what—’

  ‘Nadine, please.’

  ‘All right: Nadine. What made you dig this information out?’

  ‘To be honest …’ She leaned towards him and lowered her voice. ‘I’m worried, Harry.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘I can’t explain here. Perhaps we could meet … later.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘What room are you in?’

  Harry had to take the key from his pocket to remind himself. Rooms at the Skein of Geese were given infuriatingly anserine names rather than mere utilitarian numbers. His was Covey. Nadine nodded and he put the key away again. Why he felt as if they had just agreed to an illicit liaison he did not know, unless it was the air of sexual invitation this woman wore as other women wore perfume, the practised composition of glance and gesture that she used to imply everything whilst proposing nothing.

  ‘Rex tells me you used to work for Alan Dysart.’ She had swayed back into an upright position and reverted to a tone of easy confidence. ‘I’ve met him a couple of times. He seems just as charming in the flesh as on television. Did you find him a good employer?’

  ‘Actually, he wasn’t strictly my employer on Rhodes.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. In fact, we only know each other because he worked for me – when he was a student.’

  ‘Really?’ She seemed suddenly attentive. ‘In Oxford, you mean?’

  ‘No. Swindon. I ran a garage business there. I’m afraid it went bust all of …’ He heard his own words peter into silence. Nadine was staring at him with a fascination entirely disproportionate to his remark, a fascination, indeed, bordering on transfixion. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing … Nothing at all …’ She shook her head in unconvincing denial. That he had in some way taken her aback was as obvious to him as the reason was obscure. ‘Ah!’ Her eyes focused gratefully on the door. ‘Here’s Rex – sooner than I expected. I’ll leave you to it.’

  Before Harry could say another word, Nadine had slipped from the stool and moved past him to greet her husband. He could not catch what she said as she touched Cunningham’s shoulder and she did not look back as she walked swiftly from the bar. Harry was still gazing after her, struggling to make sense of what had happened, when Cunningham, who had positioned himself next to him, said: ‘Like a gazelle, eh?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘My wife, Barnett. She moves well, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Er … yes.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ He smiled. ‘I’m not the jealous type.’

  Quite what type Rex Cunningham was did not become clear to Harry in the course of their meal together that evening. Generosity, affability and an overwhelming fondness for the sound of his own voice: these characteristics, founded on a ready wit and a gargantuan appetite, created a superficial impression of warmth and worldliness which Harry took to be typical of an upper crust Home Counties hotelier. He steered a middle course between intimacy and aloofness which would have endeared him to the most demanding of guests.

  But not to Harry. Cunningham’s chummy dropping of the ‘Mr’ from his name did not fool him for a moment: the withdrawn and irascible figure he had encountered in mid-afternoon was nearer the soul of this man than mine accommodating and smiling host of the Skein of Geese’s oak-panelled restaurant. Through three rich courses and as many fine wines, by candlelight and hectic reminiscence, he entertained Harry to a highly plausible account of himself which yet failed to convey one ounce of conviction.

  ‘So Ockleton’s told you all about the Tyrrell Society, has he? Truth is, Barnett, we just liked our food and drink. All the rest – philosophy, history, politics – was pure hogwash. Well, perhaps not the politics. We were Tory when it was out of fashion. Not like these bumptious young boys today. ’Fraid we overstepped the mark, though. Everett taking a dive in Old Quad. Morpurgo precious near writing us both off in that bloody car crash. Symptoms of the same problem, I daresay: headstrong but brain-weak. Know what I mean? Probably not. Don’t take this the wrong way, Barnett, but unless you’re a ’varsity man – proper ’varsity, that is, not these red-brick hell-holes – you can’t imagine what it means to know you’re truly and deservedly special. Elitism they call it now, but that doesn’t capture the half of it. No, not the half. Have some more wine, Barnett. Like blood, isn’t it? Blood for the brain – in an anaemic world.

  ‘What did Ockleton say about the car crash, then? Whatever it was, it’s unreliable. Nil powers of observation, that man: always did have. Besides, he was dead to the wide on the back seat when it happened. I was pretty far gone myself, if it comes to that, Morpurgo likewise. Six or seven too many, you know how it is. If you’ve been to Burford and seen the spot, there’s nothing more to be said. We went straight out into the road and bang! Christ, the pain I was in while they cut me free! That’s what I most remember about it: pain like you wouldn’t believe.’ As a demonstration, he held his fingers in the candle-flame between them. ‘It makes you immune, you see: it makes you special all over again.’

  Everything about Cunningham was pretence, Harry began to suspect. The whole glad-handed garrulous exhibition was intended to divert and deceive. But why? Either he had perfected the performance over the years to ward off sympathy from the able-bodied, or he was hiding something far worse than a self-destructive youth. Whichever was the case, the subject of Heather’s visit to the Skein of Geese on 10 September held no terrors for him. Over the stilton and port, without need of prompting, he came to what Harry most wanted to hear.

  ‘If you think the Mallender girl was interested in all that twenty-year-old nonsense, Barnett, you’re much mistaken. Never so much as mentioned it. I went round the tabl
es that night as usual, making everybody feel welcome, and she introduced herself as Clare’s sister. I knew Clare quite well, as it happens. She used to come down here from London, sometimes just for a meal, sometimes to unwind for a few days, sometimes with some young swain or other, sometimes on her own. Pretty girl, intelligent to boot. A real asset for Dysart. Ideal for entertaining boring bigwigs on his behalf. I admired her – a lot. Can’t tell you how cut up I was last year to hear those Irish madmen had killed her.

  ‘Anyway, for some reason Heather wanted to know all about the last time Clare had been here, which, as it happened, I remembered very well, not just because it turned out to be the last I ever saw of her, but on account of something odd that had occurred. Saturday the sixteenth of May, 1987, it was. You can thank my wife for the date. She’s a dab-hand at that kind of thing. The sixteenth of May, or course, was only about a fortnight before Clare’s death. She was heavily involved in the election campaign at the time and Dysart brought her down here for dinner. A few hours of relaxation away from the whirl of London for both of them, I suppose.

  ‘I used to wonder about Dysart and that girl, Barnett, don’t mind telling you. Nobody could have blamed him for trying it on, could they? Not with that frigid bitch of a wife. Clare was, well, desirable to say the bloody least, and they must have spent a lot of time together writing speeches, or whatever it is politicians do. I always got the impression she wouldn’t have minded slipping between the sheets with him, but I can’t claim there was ever any real evidence she did. Matter of fact, as I told Heather, I stumbled on something that last evening which suggested I had completely the wrong end of the stick.

  ‘Dysart had to take a telephone call halfway through their meal. You know these politicians – always on the hop. You’d sometimes think they stage such incidents to persuade us poor bloody electors that they work hard. Anyway, off he went to the phone, asking me en route to make sure Clare didn’t get too bored waiting, because it might be a long call. Always keen to spend time with the gorgeous creature, I obliged.